Death and the Maiden
by Vengeance on a Dark Horse
Summary: If the Nordic gods are real, then what about the Greeks? (Pre/During Avengers: the span of time between Thor and the Avengers, when Loki was clearly on Earth, setting up his master plan.) (Eventual Loki x Persephone)


Summary: If the Nordic gods are real, then what about the Greeks? (Pre/During Avengers) (Eventual Loki x Persephone)

Death and the Maiden

Chapter One

The Plot

_900 A.D._

Persephone idled at the edge of an ill lit balcony, for the entire room was a balcony, built with stalactites of jagged obsidian jutting out from the side of a mountain buried deep in the belly of a vast cave as large as a city. There was no bottom to the mountain that could be seen except the bright yellow glow of a river of fire that twined like a serpent in the deep of that blackness. It looked from the balcony like nothing more than another thin sliver of Persephone's golden locks, which dangled in long undulations all the way down to her feet.

She was a small child, not much older than twelve, with a pale complexion, pale to a paste in this lightless abyss. The waifish silken robe she wore danced like slow-moving gossamer with the chills that rushed up from the river of fire and due to their ghostly translucence, they did little to cover her smooth body, sprinkled over entirely with the fairest of freckles. Dangling there on the edge of the cliff, she looked ethereal, almost like a phantom as she gazed distractedly into the black distance.

"Persephone, Demeter's daughter," spoke a voice.

Persephone turned her head and forced a sad smile, though her eyes did not smile with it.

"Poor dear sons of men," her voice was the lightest of lilts, almost a whisper, "if you wish to plead for your lives, you must plead with my husband, for I have no say over the Land of the Dead."

She looked upon two brave warriors, bearing spears and shields, clad head to foot in Grecian armor, with red plumed helms of gold, bronze breastplates with the most ornate metalwork of horses dancing on skulls, and fine robes of bright claret, the color of fresh blood.

"Poor dear warriors of men," she pined and looked back into the darkness.

"Nay, lady," the tallest young man stepped forward, "We are not dead men but living gods, come to visit the dear daughter of Demeter and Zeus, our King and Grandfather."

When the girl did not move, the young man set down his spear and shield and marched across the obsidian floor, kneeling down next to the girl.

"I am Phobos, son of Ares," said the youthful god and then with a lift of his hand gestured behind him, "That is my brother Deimos. We come to speak with you. Our father, only with great reluctance, granted us leave to visit, and for reasons other than why we come here now."

The girl did not look to him but stared in a daze. Phobos stayed kneeling in silence with an impatient glower growing on the brute angles of his low-browed, wide-jawed warrior's face.

"For what reason, then, do the sons of Ares come calling after the Queen of Hell?" Persephone said at last.

Phobos gave an eager smile, "Why for your beauty, my lady! For one as fair as you could not be unfair in her dealings with gods who seek justice."

"The Gods of Fear and Terror seek justice?"

"We seek war," said Phobos without a moment's falter, "We hear rumors of death among the Sons of Men—"

"Death is your enemy?" Persephone gave a fey and humorless smile, "Then you wage a long war. To be man is to be dying every day."

"No," Phobos leapt to a stand, with a hand on Persephone's plump arm, pulling her up to a stand. She wavered weakly for a moment, leaning on the strong man's arm, as though it had been ages since she made such exertion.

"Our enemy is the foreign hand, not from Earth but from a faraway planet covered in ice and snow," spoke Deimos, the young god who approached them, "They had not dared come before when we still walked the Earth, but now without guardians, we hear whispers that they have come to terrorize Man, the children of our people's creation."

Phobos nodded once. He cast a brooding gaze at Persephone as she hung from him limply. Now that he held her close to him, he could see the drawn sockets of her cheeks and the deep purple bags sagging beneath her black eyes, glazed over with distraction.

"You see the dead," said Deimos, "Is it true what they say?"

"Who is 'they' that they might whisper?" said Persephone, "How would they know? It is forbidden for the gods to go to the Earth."

"And yet they still try to go," said Deimos, "Zeus knows this. So he sends his spies to watch over the gateways and forbid entry. But those spies whisper and they whisper of foreign war."

There was silence, and not a word passed from Persephone whose face remained without emotion. Deimos let a piercing hiss slip through his lips as his fists clenched together until his knuckles went white.

"Weak-willed woman!" he screamed, with two aggressive strides toward the girl as his face went bloody red, "Do you not care at all?!"

Persephone stepped back from Phobos's arm and wavered like a feeble reed in the wind, but her eyes bore deep into Deimos's until, out of nowhere, her cheeks flushed and she began to laugh, so loud, so riotous that she gripped her aching side.

"No! I don't care at all!" she began to laugh, "And if you think you can strike me with terror, then, dear god, you are too late! For I am the Queen of the Damned!"

With that, she turned toward the edge of the balcony and ran forward. Spreading out her arms, she leapt and fell like a diaphanous spider's web until she was nothing more than a distant splotch of white, headed for the river of fire.

Deimos widened his eyes and ran to the ledge, yanking off his helmet to let fall a wild head of tawny hair, a thick mane that sprung every which way.

"Mad woman!" he shouted down after her with a snarl.

He turned toward his brother with a fury in his bright yellow eyes.

"She would rather throw herself in the River Styx than speak of saving men?" he spat out in disbelief.

Phobos had his eyes locked on the distant outline of the falling girl.

"No," he said, "she cannot die here, for she is already dead. She will come out unharmed; Hades has seen to it."

"How do you know that?"

Phobos looked to his brother, "I get the feeling this is not the first time she has done this."

"We cannot trust her to help us," said Deimos, "She is mad."

With a sigh, Phobos crossed his arms, "She is our safest option. Any other gateway into the Nine Realms is guarded, but Hades has no love of Zeus; he would never have let his brother put guards in Hell. When the spring comes, and Persephone is free to leave the Underworld, she alone will have access to an unguarded gate into Earth."

"The gate was made for her and her alone. Only she can come and go, and you heard her. She won't help us! She doesn't care!"

A light popped in Phobos's eyes, "Then we make her care."

"How?"

Lifting a pointed finger, Phobos spoke through a devilish smile, "Our brother."

—

Eros walked down the narrow tunnels carved into the obsidian mountain-castle. With his golden sandals, each step he took echoed in an ever growing clatter—_clip-clop, clip-clop_. He came to a halt, as his guide froze in her steps.

She turned around and looked to Eros, in all his golden glory. To every part of him, from his smooth and hairless skin to his toga, from his tightly twined curls to his bow and arrows—it all had a bronze hue, as if his very flesh was crafted from sprinkles of gold.

"Why are you here, _really_, dear nephew?" said Persephone.

"Oh, you know I hate it when you call me that," Eros shook his head with a disarmingly handsome smile, "I am so much older than you— it is such an unnatural thing for a child to call me _nephew_."

"You look not a dot older than I," Persephone walked up to Eros and reached up, standing on her toes so she could place a hand on his cheek, "Besides, you avoid the question."

"I do not," Eros pushed away the hand with a wounded look in the pucker of his lips, "Do you think so little of me that I should lie about such a matter? Like I said, I made a love potion and it all went awry. I thought of that last time I saw you, what you said about the Mirrors you have, and I thought, 'Who better to help me than Persephone?' Besides, I wished only to see you. As love-god, such morbid marriages cause me much dismay. Let's say this visit is an excuse to see if he treats you well."

Persephone let out a cold peal of laughter, "I am dead! What does it matter? What he does to me he does to a corpse!"

Eros frowned, "So he _does _abuse you?"

Persephone sighed, turning around and taking a handful of her dress to lift the hems from the ground. She began to walk down the hallway again, and from the clips and the clops, she could tell that Eros followed.

"You know that if you make a case of the abuse with your father—"

"He would do nothing!" Persephone snapped, walking down a spiraled stair case, "Would he dare defend another of his bastards in an open court, with Hera sitting at his side?"

"You make it seem so hopeless!"

"Because it is!"

At the base of the stairs was a vestibule with black columns, carved in the likeness of three-headed beasts, which lined in a path toward an arched doorway of steel. There were sculptures in the slabs of the heavy metal doors, showing a scene of devils smiling and welcoming the ghosts of men that passed into the Gates of Hell.

"What is this?" said Eros, walking behind Persephone, in between the lines of beast-shaped columns. As they arrived at the doors, Persephone shuffled through her dress, pulling out an elaborate ring of keys.

"We are to enter a room, made only for me, at Hades's instruction," said Persephone, as she fingered through the keys.

Eros waited but as she shuffled through them still, his attention wandered, onto the columns, onto the column next to him. Eros fixated on one of the columns—the likeness of the eyes was so real it seemed to glisten in the torch light. He reached out a hand to touch the eye, when Persephone looked back.

"_Don't—_" she shouted, and Eros froze, "touch them! They are _real_. If you touch them, you will wake them."

Eros glanced at the column and then at Persephone, "They are statues."

Persephone shook her head as she inserted a key into one of the doors.

"No," she said, "That is what Hades wants you to think. As soon as you touch them, they will devour you. And if anyone should touch this door, who is not me, they will devour you."

Eros tilted his head and gave a narrowed look at the columns.

"Well then," he smiled, "how tricky of Hades. He always was a clever fellow."

"When it comes to the more creative ways of death and dying," Persephone said as she unlocked the door, "he will put us all to shame."

She placed her hand on the door, and the sound of cogs turning rumbled through the room until the doors began to slide open, revealing the distant blue glow of the room beyond.

"Come," said Persephone, as she walked into the room. Eros followed, with eyes wide as he beheld the cylindrical room around him. There were nine faces of the wall, each rippling like it were the surface of a pool of water, and yet each shone with a dim blue lit, flickering images of one of the Nine Realms.

"My, my, so these are the Mirrors into the Realms," said Eros, "I can see why you spend so much time here. Why bother with Hell when you can watch the other worlds around you?"

Persephone strode to a table at the center of the room, beckoning at Eros to follow as she sat on a stone bench.

She gave a soft smile and nodded at Eros's words.

"Yes," she said, "When I am here, all I do is dream of when I will get to be _there_."

"Might I have a drink?" said Eros, sitting on the bench beside Persephone, "The heat of Hell—it makes one thirsty."

Persephone clapped her hands twice, and with a rumble outside, one of the columns from outside had become enlivened—a stony three-headed beast, walking on all fours into the room. All three pairs of stony eyes, glowing with the reflection of the blue light, stared coldly at Eros. The love-god rubbed the back of his neck nervously.

"Wine for our guest," she ordered the beast, and it bowed and left but not without a stare and a growl in Eros's direction.

Once the beast left, Eros turned to Persephone next to him.

"So, how do you decide?" he said.

"Decide what?"

"What realm you will go to?"

"Oh, that is simple. I always go here," she pointed at one mirror, "That is where my mother lives now, ever since we left Earth."

"Don't you ever go anywhere else?"

"What for?"

Eros shrugged, "Well, to explore, to have fun! You don't always have to visit your mother every year."

"That was the agreement between Hades and my mother."

Eros leapt to his feet when the beast entered the room again, with a plate balanced on its back.

"The agreement," he said, walking over to the beast and taking the pitcher of wine and pouring it into two glasses, "was for you to spend four months here, and eight months wherever you may please. You should take advantage of that."

He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Persephone was distracted looking at all the images flitting across the mirrors. He glanced down and saw that the beast was distracted looking at Persephone. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a vial full of a red liquid. With a careful pull at the cork, he opened it noiselessly and poured it into the rightward glass of wine. Placing the vial back into his pocket, he took both glasses and carried them over to the bench.

Waiting for the beast to leave the room, Eros reached out his right hand and smiled at Persephone. She took the wine glass. He reached up his glass in a toast.

"A toast!" he said, "To the dreams of your future adventures."

Persephone chuckled softly and clanked her glass against his. They both took a swig, and as Persephone brought down her glass, she found Eros strangely staring at her face.

"What?"

Eros grinned, "Nothing."

He stood up and walked over to a mirror.

"Let's plan your next adventure, shall we?" he said. He placed his hand on the mirror and spun around the image of a green and blue planet.

"We can't," Persephone said, "That is Earth."

Eros scoffed, "You are ruining my fun! We are _pretending_!"

He waved his hand across the mirror until the image hovered over Europe. Pressing again and again, the image zoomed in over the center of it.

"If I could go anywhere on Earth," he said, "I would go here."

"Germania?" Persephone snorted, drinking in more of the wine, "It's a land of mindless barbarians."

Eros shook his head, "On the contrary, the world's changed since Caesar's fall- at least that's what the rumors say."

Persephone drank some more.

"I hear that Germania is the height of civilization—the Vikings, they've ravage from here," he pointed at Britain and then to Turkey, "all the way to there! They are a formidable bunch, worthy of the Romans that came before them."

"It's a shame—what with Caesar and all, such a lovely conqueror he was," Persephone drank another sip.

Eros laughed, "You sound just like my brothers."

"Who? Phobos and Deimos?" Persephone rolled her eyes, "They're dullards."

Eros shrugged, and then slapped his hand against the mirror until the image focused on a village deep in Viking territory. A man walked into view, young and blonde, a warrior, a son of a king.

"My, this wine is tasty!" Eros said, "For a drink from hell that is!"

He took another swig, and Persephone joined him. When she brought the glass down and looked at the image of the young man walking before her, her breath stopped.

Rising slowly to a stand, she had a dazed grin on her face as the wine glass dropped down, crashing onto the ground.

"Goodness!" Eros exclaimed, looking at the broken glass, "Are you well?"

Persephone walked up to Eros's side with her eyes hooked on the mirror. She placed her hand on the image and caressed the young man's face.

"What are you doing?" Eros asked with an arch of his brow.

"Isn't this young man handsome?" said Persephone.

"Who?"

Persephone nodded at the image she caressed, "Him! Isn't he beautiful?"

"The Viking?" Eros jerked a shoulder, "He is alright. But in any case, I really should talk to you about that love potion I botched. You see, I gave a half-sister a potion to fall back in love with her husband, but alas, when I was with Hekate to brew the potion, I used the word "fall back in love with the _first _love." And it seemed that my half-sister had fallen for another before her husband—some foreigner, a King, not from Earth but from a different planet, Asgard, I believe."

Persephone leaned against the image on the mirror and slipped down onto her knees in worship.

"Are you listening?" Eros said, bending over besides the girl, "_Hello_?"

Persephone started, as if waking from sleep, "What?"

"I told you," said Eros, "my botched potion, it made my sister fall back in love with an Asgardian—you know, those warrior people in one of the Nine Realms."

Persephone gave a faint nod.

"Well, I've never seen this fellow before," said Eros, "and it is impossible for me to be able to make a potion to fall _out _of love with a man I've never seen. So could you perhaps show me this man, in the mirror, just a second will suffice."

Persephone nodded again, but she was too weak to rise from her knees. She pointed to a mirror.

"There," she said, "Asgard is there."

Eros walked over and waved at the mirror until there was an image of Odin.

"That is all I need," he said, smiling, then bowed and left Persephone on the floor, writhing in awe at the image before her.

"Works every time," Eros muttered under his breath, with a satisfied smirk hidden in the corner of his lips.


End file.
